A Small Village in Bohemia
by mahtra
Summary: Tanya is 1000 years old. What do we know about her? What was her life like back then?


**DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement or religious attack is intended. I'd be happy to call myself Stephenie Meyer, Bora Dagtekin or Cédric Klapisch, but unfortunately my parents chose another name for me. So it comes that I do not own anything except experiences.**

**WARNING: For this chapter I didn't do any specific research. I used knowledge I got in school and studies. I haven't finished my medieval studies and had a long break since the last time I had to work in that area. So please don't be too strict. SM says Tanya, Kate and Irina are Slavic. I am not even sure if I matched the origin for the Denali Sisters to the tribal movements at that time. So please do not believe anything you read here without double checking. Unfortunately I am not so good with Slavic history. The facts about unfreedom are based on later Western European researches. I can't really say anything about the missionary aspect/believe of Bohemia, but I went with what I learned about the Scandinavian mission and the likes. The picture Tanya likes is a 'Majestas domini'/Christ in Majesty. About the baby: Tanya preferred human lovers and the vampire body is impenetrable for humans. My conclusion: She can't have been a virgin during the change. Thank you HBO for finally acknowledging the issue. (I guess I am a bit of a Jason Stackhouse with my random ideas...) And for those who haven't guessed it yet: Yes, I am talking about the Californian San Francisco.**

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She didn't remember much about her life before her change. At least she didn't when she actively tried to remember. Sometimes she started thinking about something and some old memories came up. Her first life was so different from the life she was having now. She didn't know when she was born. In that time people didn't really write down these things. She knew that her mother had always altered the amount and age of her children when the reeve came. So that she wouldn't have to pay so much to the lord of the manor. She was pretty sure though what date she was born. Because of her name Tatjana, it must have been the evening of 11th or on 12th of January. But of course she couldn't be sure. In the time of her birth Christianity wasn't really established in Bohemia. So the churches were not really keeping up with childbirth and baptism. Just a few decades ago the Hungarians came with their horde and raided the villages. The old women from the village sometimes told them about it. It must have been brutal. Later a few men came and were preaching about this man who had supposedly died on a cross for all of them. They were shaving their heads in this weird form, spoke in an unfamiliar tongue and weren't married. Her grandmother always believed that they met with the blacksmith's wife though. Tatjana saw a book for the first time in the small building they called a church. She liked it. The pictures in it were so pretty and colorful. There was this man with the winged animals around him. She thought it looked lovely.

But her grandmother was always mocking them for this Christ. Her grandmother was strong in the old believe. She didn't like her mother for a lot of reasons. One of them was the believe. When they went to bed in the evening, her grandmother always refused to sleep next her mother or next to Tatjana. Always one of the other children had to sleep in between them. Every day she ways showing the resentments: That it was her mother's fault that she has born a red haired girl instead of an appropriate heir. It didn't matter that the next four children were boys. It was her mother's fault that her father, her grandmother's apple of the eye, had died because of a tetanus infection. But most of all her grandmother resented her mother for leaving freedom. Her oldest brother was just 10 by the time her father died. They had to wait for three more years before he became an adult. But the times weren't stable. They needed the protection. So they became unfree and were protected from then on by the landlord. They were lucky though, their degree of unfreedom wasn't too some wax interest. There were rumors of the war between the Henry II of the Holy Roman Empire and Boleslaw of Poland. Bohemia was strategically important for both countries. So both of them fought for it, in it.

Then Tanya's memories became more and more fuzzy. She remembered how they had tried to get her married. Finding herself a husband was quite difficult. It wasn't that she wasn't pretty or in a good financial position. She wasn't free anymore, but Slavic tribes had only few free families. It shouldn't have been difficult, hadn't she been redhaired. The men were afraid of her hair and her beauty. They didn't believe her to be a witch, but they believed that her hair was a bad omen. They were superstitious. Their property and harvest were important for them. They wouldn't want to risk both by marrying Tantjana. And maybe, just maybe they feared to be a cuckold as well. The village was small, just a couple of farms. And people were talking back then just as much as nowadays. It would have been embarrassing. Of course anybody said anything about that reason to them. Her mother was desperate. She thought, she was at fault for her daughter's problems. If they were still free, Tatjana could have joined a cloister. Then at least they wouldn't have had to feed her. But finally she had been married off. Unfortunately to a lesser hand. From being born free Tatjana had taken two more steps into serfdom. Tatjana hadn't been in love with her groom. But that wasn't unusual in that time. She was glad, that she got herself a man and got a friend in him. She didn't remember really well how she was changed.

She remembered that she had gone down to the river to cut some willow branches. She had become quite a crafted basked weaver and her basked were asked for. The next thing she remembered was the pain. She didn't really see her creator. She just felt some presence and before she could cross herself Sasha had bitten her. Tanya felt a longing. It had been long since she remembered it, but her heart was heavy. She was thankful for Sasha for taking her away for the change. She would have been distraught had she realized that she had killed her own baby. She still felt the longing for that child. It had taken her some centuries to stop drinking human blood and by then her daughter had died. But sometimes she wondered if she could have had a life like Bella's. The thirst immediately under control and able to care for her child. She had sworn herself though, that she wouldn't dwell on it. It didn't change anything to think about it now. Her child was dead for over 900 years.

In the Carpathian Mountains they had found Katrina. She had been on her way to the market when they took her. A few years later they went further north. Near the town Gomel in Belarus, close to the Ukrainian and Russian border Sasha created Irina. For thenext few centuries they lived almost everywhere in Europe. They witnessed the Battle of Lake Peipus and they saw the big bloody mess of St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Paris. And they saw Peter the Great shaving the beards of the Russians. They swam through lakes to visit monks in their monastery during the white nights in Karelia. When Russia expanded to the American continent they went with it. They watched the Spanish building a fort with the patronage of St. Francis to protect themselves. The Russians were coming more and more south from Alaska. It was there that they met Eleazar and Carmen.

Tanya remembered more events. She remembered to hear the news back then from events that were written now in history books. She had lived long and still she hadn't found someone to spend the life with.


End file.
